[Keakie]

So, I have been charting for less than a week and this is my first cycle post BCP. My non-period ended yesterday morning, and throughout the rest of the day there was no cervical fluid and I recorded it as a 'dry' day. Simple enough?

Today I still *feel* dry, but am seeing a lot of milky/cloudy cervical fluid. It's like my body mostly skipped dry/sticky. Is this just coming-off-bcp weirdness?

On a positive note, I found my cervix this morning.

[plan4fate]

LOL

I'm gonna let Shawna see this and give one of her wicked awesome answers because she gave it to me a while back .


But I don't get a lot of genuinely dry days prior to O.. mine seem to come after. And I only get a sticky day once every cycle or two. I spend most of my time creamy/wet and when I'm fertile It switches to slippery.

[ShawnaCAN]

Some women never have truly "dry" days. "Dry" means nothing felt, nothing seen. If you feel dry, but see something - then consider it potentially fertile. After you have 3 cycles of charting completed, you can figure out if this observation is your infertile discharge - but for now, err on the side of fertility.
You can record "dry" as the vaginal sensation observation, record "milky" or "cloudy" for the appearance. Do not expect your body to follow a particular mucus pattern that you saw in a textbook. Every woman's fertility is unique to her, and every cycle is unique. Just chart exactly what you observe. Nothing felt/nothing seen is infertile. Anything else is potentially fertile for now. Are you taking a month without genital contact to really master the mucus observations without other fluids to confuse it, or hoping to jump into the guidelines for TTA right away?

It's VERY common after the BCP to have constant infertile discharge. It's because the BCP shrivels up the parts of the cervix where good quality fertile mucus is produced, which increases the production infertile discharge. It's not uncommon to notice changes in your mucus pattern over time, the longer you go without any BCP in your system. For the first while you might have infertile discharge all the time, a short fertile mucus phase, or not much fertile mucus at all. Then as time goes on, the fertile mucus improves and the infertile discharge may decrease. Full recovery of the cervix can take about 18 months.

It's much more confusing to figure it out on your own, so if you're at all open to letting an instructor guide you through it all - I do recommend it! We're here to answer questions too, but it's not quite the same as having step by step guidance and support.

[Keakie]

That makes sense. We probably won't have the self-control to go without any contact but we plan on using condoms very generously for the first few months. I know it isn't ideal, but we're moving and putting the finishing touches on our wedding, and I think we would both lose it if we didn't have that special down time together.

As long as I know it's normal to a) have some weirdness coming off of the pill and b) not to have the exact pattern as TCOYF describes, I feel fine. By those definitions, yesterday was a "dry" day after all and I'll just keep note of everything else I see today.

I'm not sure that I'm an instructor type of person. That sort of voice can go in one ear and out the other for me, because mentally I think I've got it figured out (in reality, I usually have a good idea but my brain tends to gloss over the finer details as not important) and then when I realize I don't, that's when I seek out the help (that was probably given to me the first time around but my brain simply deemed it unimportant back then ). I'm working on that.

Thanks so much!

[ShawnaCAN]

No problem! Just make sure you chart the times you use a condom as well, since the next's days mucus observations can be obscured by that. It will just take a little longer to sort out what's fertile and what's infertile that way.

Are you using a paper chart from the book, or the charting software that goes with TCOYF? Both are good, because they allow you to record what you feel and what you see!

[Keakie]

Will do. That makes sense.

I'm using both right now - initially I was just going to use the paper chart for temperatures (so I could make sure I recorded the temperature soon after I took it - it's on my nightstand) but it's really not difficult to note everything else on it. I also use the TCOYF software.

[LJD3Tdance]

Aren't we lucky to have Shawna?

[Keakie]

Absolutely!